David Rankin of Harrington Brooks

We sat down with David Rankin, Insolvency Practitioner at Harrington Brooks, to find out about offering holistic solutions, why Liverpool is the best football team and what makes regulation a continual issue...

We also wanted to say an especial thank you to David for taking the time to answer Debt Management Today's questions despite having broken his foot!

1) Firstly, what exactly does Harrington Brooks do, and what is your role within the company?

In a sentence, Harrington Brooks provides a range of debt solutions and other assistance to over-indebted consumers. I am a licensed insolvency practitioner so my principal role within the company is to act as Nominee and Supervisor of Individual Voluntary Arrangements but I also contribute to other areas of the business.

2) When did you join Harrington Brooks and what did you do before?

I joined Harrington Brooks in January 2007. Before that I had spent some 23 years in the insolvency profession working in both the corporate and personal insolvency sectors and I qualified as a licensed insolvency practitioner in 1996.

3) What kind of debt management advice do you give?

At Harrington Brooks we aim to give our clients the right advice first time, whether that be a debt management plan, an individual voluntary arrangement, a debt relief order, bankruptcy or some other solution.

4) What do you think is the biggest issue at the moment in the debt solutions industry?

At the moment the issue of regulation is the single biggest issue. There have been a number of consultations over the past few years involving the Ministry of Justice, the Office of Fair Trading and the Insolvency Service. The industry is continuously under the spotlight and has attracted more than its fair share of criticism. As an industry we need to work to prove that we provide a valuable service to our clients and offer value for money. We need to be transparent and show that the major providers are taking a lead in providing effective and meaningful self-regulation. There are two industry bodies currently representing the industry and we need to move to a position where all providers must belong to one of those bodies and be subject to inspection as a condition of being authorised to carry on business.

5) How does the majority of your business reach you? Do you offer incentives to brokers for referrals?

The majority of our business reaches us via the internet. Consumers are used to logging onto Google and searching for solutions for most of the services they require these days. We don’t work with brokers but do work with a limited number of trusted affiliates who also source most of their clients via the internet.

6) What kind of cases do you deal with on a regular basis?

All of our clients have reached a point where they are unable to service their unsecured debts. They have typically managed their debt for a number of years but have experienced some kind of setback that has made their debt level unsustainable, whether because of redundancy, loss of overtime or bonuses, a separation or divorce or even the arrival of a child that has meant that either their income has decreased or the expenses have increased. Of course there are also a number who have been foolish or reckless and have taken on debt they can never hope to repay and others who have borrowed money to repay existing debt but found interest charges mounting up.

7) What is the most common reason for people getting into debt?

Outside of the various life events listed above, over the past decade or two people have been encouraged by many influences to borrow money to fund a lifestyle that was probably never sustainable. Without going into politics, people have been encouraged to pursue the dream of owning their own home and were led to believe that property prices would keep on rising forever, so many were encourage to take on mortgages that they could barely afford and were then encouraged by advertising to borrow even more by way of secured loans to fund an aspirational lifestyle and now find that that equity is disappearing. They need to maintain repayments on their secured borrowing to avoid losing their home so their unsecured debts fall into arrears. Most secured loans are on fixed interest rates so the fall in the base rate has not provided any relief.

Everybody, homeowners and tenants, have been encouraged to acquire the latest consumer products, first it was flat screen televisions, then widescreen, then plasma or LCD and now 3D. Everybody wants the latest technology and the last ten years have seen unprecedented developments in that area. People cannot survive now without a computer, whether it’s a PC, a laptop or a tablet and everyone wants to have the latest mobile phone and access the internet on the move. The same applies to other domestic products. People have also been encouraged to travel further and more often on their holidays, through both the rise of budget airlines and the ease of arranging their own travel on the internet. They are all symptoms of our consumer driven society. And countries need to perpetuate that demand nowadays to try to help their own economies out of recession.

8) What less well-known options are available to those seeking debt management that brokers may want to refer their clients to you for?

Well we deal with all statutory and non-statutory solutions so we help people for whom bankruptcy is the best solution and although we are not an approved intermediary for Debt Relief Orders we can educate people as to what they are and where to go if it is the best solution for their particular circumstances. We may be able to assist people in negotiating full and final settlements with their creditors if they have a lump sum they are able to put up to pay a proportion of their debts.

9) You don’t just offer DMPs or IVAs etc., could you tell us a bit more about the other ways in which you help individuals facing debt or money mismanagement?

We try to provide a holistic solution for our clients. We look at ways we might be able to help them reduce their outgoings through things like utility switching. A lot of our clients have stopped paying for what they see as non-essentials and we find families where the wage earners have no life insurance which places their family at risk should anything happen to them so we are able to provide very cost-effective life cover which can be incorporated into their income and expenditure in determining the level of payments they can make to their creditors. Similarly we can provide a payment protection product to cover their debt management payments for up to a year should they be made redundant or suffer an accident or illness.

We also look at ways in which they may be able to increase their income, by checking that they are claiming all benefits or tax credits that they are entitled to. That can include things like housing benefit or council tax benefit as well as the more obvious ones.

In short we try to help them not just to manage their debt but to manage their finances so that they can face the future with more confidence.

10) If you weren’t working at Harrington Brooks what do you think you would be doing instead?

Well as I have now worked in insolvency for over 28 years I would probably be doing something very similar somewhere else but in an ideal world I would have had a successful career playing professional football for Liverpool FC and would now be happily retired and pursuing my hobbies!

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